What Beckerman saw in the aftermath of the tragedy was “an incredible coming together of American Jews and a lot of warmth and a sense of resilience,” he says on this week’s podcast. “But it also felt a little bit like an illusion; it felt like the sense of being victims actually gave Jews this brief, fleeting moment of something that they really are losing: a sense of shared identity. It made me feel like, yes, we need to talk now about: What does that identity look like? And it can’t be the cultural ethnic identity. It certainly can’t be victimhood.”

Beckerman discusses his essay, five new books, and the past, present and future of Jews in America.

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Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

Kiese Laymon also appears on this week’s episode. His widely praised “Heavy” is, he says, a memoir “about memoirs, directly addressed to my mother, about lies we told each other and secrets we were supposed to keep, and what I feel like is the fracturing of what I call American promise — there’s a lot of promises in this book that just get broken over and over again.”

Also on this podcast, Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; and Emily Eakin, Tina Jordan and John Williams talk about what people are reading. Pamela Paul is the host.